Dogs, it is an undisputed fact that our humans have more pictures of us on their phones and cameras than anyone else. But have you ever stopped to wonder when this obsession with dog pictures started? I did! According to researchers, the oldest known dog art may be 8000 to 9000 years old!
Located in Shuwaymis and Jubbah in northwestern Saudi Arabia are sandstone cliffs covered in rock art depicting animals, including dogs! In fact Maria Guagnin, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, counted 156 dogs at Shuwaymis and 193 at Jubbah, making for a total of 349 dogs! A far cry from the thousands of pictures our Mom has shared of us on social media, but a very impressive start! Guagnin and her colleagues estimate the drawings date back more than 8000 years, thus making them the earliest known depictions of dogs.
According to their study, the rock art represents a hunting scene with domesticated dogs with “pricked up ears, short snouts, and curled tails.” What’s even more interesting is unlike the stylized depictions of other animals, all of the dogs have individual traits. Some are drawn with spots on their coats, or white patches on the head or chest. Some are clearly male, and all have different tail positions, stances, and coat colorations. These were not just a generalized retelling of a hunt. These were actual dogs who faced off against wild donkeys, ibexes and gazelles!
Now if that isn’t interesting enough, some of these dogs have lines connecting them from their necks to a human, leading researchers to speculate this could be proof of humans using leashes! Angela Perri, a zooarchaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, theorized, “the Arabian hunters may have used the leashes to keep valuable scent dogs close and protected…or to train new dogs.” The lines attached the dogs to the human figure’s waist, leading Perri to hypothesize, “leashing dogs to the hunter’s waist may have freed his hands for the bow and arrow.” However, Paul Tacon, an archaeologist at Griffith University, cautions this is pure speculation at this point. The lines could be symbolic and not actual leashes. Or as this dog historian would like to point out, this could be a case of the dogs leash training their humans, and not the other way around.
Therefore, everyone agrees that more research needs to be done, especially when it comes to dating the art. Currently the estimate of 8000 to 9000 years old is based on the sequence of the carvings, the weathering of the rock, and the timing of the switch from hunter-gatherers to pastoralism. To confirm the chronology, scientists will need to link the images to an archaeological site with dated evidence. So the work in that region will continue. However, it is fascinating to know that 8000 to 9000 years ago humans were sharing their dogs’ adventures like we do today on social media.
To learn more about this 2017 discovery, visit “Pre-Neolithic evidence for dog-assisted hunting strategies in Arabia,” Journal of Anthropological Archeology, March 2018.
